ModernServiceWeapons

When you hit the range, have a plan for the day so that you can get the best bang for your buck (literally).  There is no need to get very elaborate all the time when planning your range session.  Working core skills is rarely considered glamorous or “operator” enough, but the reality is that none of the other ninja stuff matters if your basic skill set is weak or underdeveloped.

In blowing the dust off for the upcoming Pat MacNamara TAPS class next week, I looked at some basic skill sets for the carbine.  I shot these strings of fire on two MGM/VTAC B/C zone torso steel at about 60 yards.  All starts from standing low ready, selector lever on safe.

-Present & fire 1 on one target.

-Present & fire 2 on one target.

-Present and fire 5 on one target.

-Present and fire 1 on each target.

-Present and fire 2 on each target.

-Standing to kneeling, 1 shot on one target.

-Standing to kneeling, 2 shots on one target.

-Present and

Wilson Combat has been innovating the 1911 world for decades, and hasn’t stopped yet. They continue to make some of the best high end 1911 pistols on the market, and they’ve been making 1911 magazines since before many of our readers were born. Recently, they’ve been changing the 1911 market by introducing flat wire spring technology in their 1911 recoil springs, which reportedly increase the maintenance cycle by up to 10 times. So if they work so well in recoil springs, why not put them in a magazine?

A common complaint regarding many 8-round magazines is the limited spring life. Use them heavily or leave them loaded for a long time and they quickly lose lift, resulting in malfunctions. The new ETM HD magazine addresses this with a longer tube to fit a longer spring, and a flat wire spring that is advertised to provide 25% more lift than standard springs. Like all their products, the magazine is guaranteed for life by Wilson Combat.

The stainless steel

10-8 tall rear sight, mounted to rear of Trijicon RMR on ATEi customized slide.

With the growth in popularity of the mini red dot optic on handguns, much thought has been given to the options of where and how to mount back up iron sights on the slide.  It comes down to a few basic options for consideration:

1) No iron sights.

2) Rear sight in front or behind the optic.

3) Inserts on the sights or plain black.

Let’s consider that option 1 is a less than optimal idea on any type of pistol for serious use.  Pistol optics are not where rifle optics are – it is not inconceivable to run either a service or training carbine without irons and do ok.  Pistol optics still fail, and irons are necessary.  Further, some shooters need the familiar index of iron sights to help find their dot.  More on this later.

So do we put the rear sight behind or i

Molded rail sections. From L: Scout light adapter, long and short Picatinny rails.

I have been using the CMR rail from Centurion Arms for a while on my latest rifle build.  It is an exquisitely well executed tubular forend with a 12:00 rail and threaded helicoils for the attachment of modular rail sections.  My buddy Monty from Centurion had supplied me with a set of the preproduction rail sections a few months ago, and I finally got around to getting them onto the gun.  The rail sections are molded, and screw right onto the tube via the threaded helicoils.  As pictured above, there is a Scout mount adapter as well as a long and short Picatinny rail.  Other adapters, including an X300 mount, are in the works.  Production units of the pictured rail sections should be hitting fairly soon at your favorite Centurion dea

About a year ago I received a Cobra Belt from Mike Benedict at Talon Tactical, who recommended his belt for everyday use. For my initial impressions, check out my original review of the Cobra Belt. I’ve worn this belt every day for approximately a year and compared to most nylon belts I have worn, the webbing has held up remarkably well. It is still stiff enough to support a pistol and spare mag pouches. The black coating on the buckle has held up pretty well. The black buckle with black webbing goes with most casual wear.

If you’re looking for a nice gift to give this Christmas, check out the Cobra Belt from Talon Tactical.

Tim recently shared this photo of his duty gun, an extremely worn and reworked specimen of the Nighthawk 10-8 model with the now defunct Dawson Rail.  His light setup is the old Surefire Military Light with the optional high intensity 120 lumen lamp installed.

After the tinge of nostalgia passed, I ran to the safe to weigh a similarly equipped pistol.  The above pictured setup weighs 51 oz unloaded, no magazine.  Ouch.  That is a lot of metal to hump all day for 9 rounds and 120 lumens for 30 minutes run time.  The light alone weighs 8.4 ounces.  If this setup were updated to an X300, it would only pare it down to 4.1 ounces, for a roughly 47 ounce setup.  My back hurts just thinking about it.

Ever the one to torture myself at the range, I had been bouncing around ideas for courses of fire which would help me test out new pistols to get an idea of a baseline performance standard with them.  I ended up tacking together some of my favorite drills into a longer set, which I’ll now call the 10-8 Pistol Standards #2.  If you are wondering what happened to #1, it is the old 10-8 Pistol Test, aka the 5 Second Standards.  That course was very manipulation intensive, and this time around I wanted just a straight up shooting test.

The drill is shot on an IDPA or USPSA target, using the scoring convention from that particular discipline.  Start position is hands naturally at sides, all strings starting from the holster.

Ok, I didn’t really learn how to love cleaning AR barrels, but I have learned a few tricks to make it less painful.  The two biggest helpers are the above pictured C.J. Weapon Accessories chamber swabs and the .22 bore snake from Hoppes.  With the help of these two items, much time is saved during cleaning, and I am able to complete routine maintenance in about 10-15 minutes.

I don’t get super crazy with the barrel of my AR rifles, as most of mine are milspec type chrome lined, and I am just looking to get out the big chunks for reliability and wear, not make the gun white glove clean.  Here’s how I clean my barrels:

1) Scrub chamber with GI chambe

The M&P CORE (Competition Optic Ready Equipment) seems to be trickling out into more holsters, and we have been seeing more questions about it.  I have one of the very early CORE Pro 5″ 9mm guns, and wanted to share some candid thoughts on the system.  I have some older articles with a first look at the gun, the mounting system, and a quick range report, and it may help to check those out if you are unfamiliar with this gun.  Apologies for whatever mysterious code gremlins that squished the pics in the first article.

First, let’s get this out of the way: NO, (pick a brand/model) rear sight does NOT also fit in CORE.  The rear dovetail is unique, and has no dimensional commonality with the original M&P dovetail or the Glock dovetail.  As such, the only aftermarket option is currently the Dawson Precision replacement, and it may stay

I would like to extend Thanksgiving wishes to all our loyal readers from the whole crew here at MSW.  We are so thankful that you each have chosen to stop by and read our site and share in the exchange of information here.  We will be taking some time off to spend with family and friends to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, and hope that you are able to do the same.

Every year I give thanks for our freedom and our safety, and those who help to preserve it.  Take a moment to think of those deployed in foreign lands, away from family and home, fighting to protect America’s interests abroad.  Think about those on shift during the holiday, perhaps reduced to enjoying the day with only a turkey sandwich between calls in the patrol car.

I am thankful to live in this great country, and proud to serve and protect its people.  I am very fortunate to serve in the company of brave men, and look to honor their trust by striving for excellence every day.

I will close out today’s entry with a quote stolen&#823

10-8 rear sights on Glock, 1911, M&P. Photo by Triple Bravo.

In yesterday’s post, I discussed the attributes of different front sight types.  Today we will take a look at the different considerations for rear sights and how to put it all together.  

The most common type of rear sight is the two dot rear, which is a factory option with either tritium or white painted dots.  In the execution of proper marksmanship fundamentals, the rear sight and target should be in soft focus while the front sight is in sharp focus.  This is mostly because the front sight is the midpoint between the three focal planes and our eye is only capable of focusing on one.  The concept of the two dot rear is that you basically line up the front and rear dots and you are all set.  The problem with this is that the front dot, especially if it is white pa

Shield with brass bead front sight, M&P with fiber optic.
Photo by Triple Bravo.

As a manufacturer of sighting systems, we get a lot of emails about choosing sights.  In this installment, I will address choosing front sights, and we’ll talk about rear sights in the next one.

The first part of the process is to determine your needs in terms of your use and vision requirements.  Are you using the pistol for competition, recreation, CCW, LE duty use?  Each usage profile has a different set of needs which should be examined.  

Front Sight Profile:

It is pretty rare these days to find a sight profile other than a semi-ramp, in which the face of the blade is slightly angled away from the shooter.  Gone are the days of undercut target sights (think of a hook), full ramps (older design S

MSW readers may recall the trigger work that I’d done on my Gen4 Glock 19 a few weeks back.  While in dry fire testing I wasn’t super excited about the improvements to the stock trigger, the results on the range told a different story.  Bringing the pull weight down to 5 lbs 12 oz from the original 7 lbs made this little gun an absolute laser.  

With the trigger weight under control, I found that I was back up to my full performance on various standard drills.  This gun has a relatively simple setup, yet yields tremendous performance and is able to fill nearly every role you could ask – duty carry in exposed/tactical/duty holsters, concealed carry, off duty carry.

Here’s the setup:

-Gen4 Glock 19

-Gen3 trigger bar and Glock minus connector, internal polish of all parts

-10-8 .140″ U notch

Springfield 1911/Colt M45 Dual Recoil Spring Assembly

A short time ago Hilton contacted me about evaluating the Colt M45 1911 Dual Recoil Spring Assembly. As you may know from earlier articles, Colt developed the Dual Recoil Spring assembly for use in the M45 at the request of the Marine Corps. The system is designed to prolong spring life between changes and increase the round count between them.

The outermost spring is the same diameter as a standard recoil spring, with the inner spring fitting closely inside. The innermost spring is slightly longer than the outer spring. The system will work with a standard GI recoil spring plug, however it must be used with the supplied recoil spring guide rod due to the smaller diameter inner spring. The supplied guide rod shaft is smaller than a GI guide rod, however the other dimensions are the same as a standard guide rod.

Installation is the same as a standard spring system. The spring system is designed for a 5 inch 1911.

I’ve installed the system in my Springfield

Recently, I got a call from an officer from a neighboring PD asking if I could take a look at his 1911. You know, because it wasn’t working. I asked him a few questions, and it turns out this particular example was a Colt Rail Gun, but really it could be any permutation of a 1911 Government Model that populate the local gun shops. He said the pistol was giving him fits, he had lost confidence in it, and asked if I could take a look at it.

Of all the 1911 pistols out on the market, Colt probably does the best job putting out guns that generally work out of the box, as seen in my article: Colt Reliability Out of the Box. But they aren’t perfect. So I asked this officer (over the phone), what is it doing? He said it was having feeding issues and also “jamming a lot.” I told him that doesn’t really tell me anything. His response, “Well, I’m not a gun guy.”

I could go into a diatribe about how many cops don’t make enough effo

We were on the range the other day doing some T&E work, and my partner was shooting his HK 416 from prone from 50 yards.  I decided to be a smarty, and stepped up on the line beside him, and shot his target with my M&P .40.  I was trying to hit where he was attempting to shoot a group at in an attempt to mess with him.  On my second shot, I noted a drastic change in recoil.  It wasn’t the feeling of a “hot” or over charged round.  It was as if the recoil spring failed.  I stopped, stepped to the side, and kicked the round out of the chamber.  The center round was the one that came from the chamber.  I then inspected the remaining rounds in the magazines, and inspected the recoil spring.  The recoil spring had very little resistance to it, and I could pull the slide back nearly 1/4 inch before the spring would even think about engaging.  I reassembled the gun, and hand cycled the two rounds on the left and right.  I got minor case deformation just hand cycling it.

The spring has about 4500 rounds on

After over a year of development and relentless testing of countless prototypes, I am pleased to announce the 10-8 magazine well for the M&P 9/40 full sized frame pistols.  

This magazine well is easily installed by the end user with only a hex wrench, and offers significantly improved speed over the stock frame opening.  The funnel is CNC machined from tough glass reinforced nylon – comparable in strength to the frame material, and adds negligible weight or bulk.  The use of nylon instead of aluminum gives the magazine well an extremely slick feel during reloading, and was preferred by all beta testers over the aluminum prototypes.  The funnel is firmly anchored to the frame through the use of an included machined alum

It comes up all the time on interweb discussions about so and so’s tricked out gun puking at the training class, and therefore match barrels have no place on a service weapon.  Too many times, the judgement is arrived upon too hastily, and there are other factors afoot.

A match barrel offers improved accuracy in any weapon system, and in certain pistols – some lower end rack grade 1911s (the Springfields with the two piece factory barrels – Loaded, Milspec for example), earlier production M&Ps with the 1:18.75 twist barrels – they are almost a necessity to bring out the maximum performance.  It sure is discouraging to train hard and become frustrated with your accuracy, only to realize that you are outshooting the weapon system.

Most pistol barrels achieve their improved accuracy by having a tighter fit in the pistol.  In a 1911, that is pretty much every dimension of the barrel – the muzzle end at the barrel/bushing/slide, lower lugs to slide stop,

The word “hero” is often overused, or misused in the American culture.  It seems that the lame stream media tosses around the word “hero” anytime someone tosses a ball, scores a goal, or dominates social media.

The man in the above photo is a true American hero.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with this man, more can be learned here http://www.navy.mil/moh/mpmurphy/.

Upon Lt. Murphy’s death, Crossfit took one of his favorite workouts to which he entitled “Body Armor” and added it to the “HERO” Crossfit WODs as simply “Murph”.

“Murph” is the following-

For time-

One mile run, one hundred pull ups, two hundred push ups, three hundred body weight squats, and a one mile run.

Each Memorial Day, Crossfitter’s assemble and do a “Memorial Day Murph” to honor Lt. Murphy.  While not an easy work out, it is a fitting tribute to

87 Industries Gas Block Kit comes complete with the gas block, set screw, cross pin, gas tube pin, and hex wrench.

Our dedicated followers know that a pinned gas block is cheap insurance that your gas system won’t leak or come apart at the worst possible moment. Popular extended hand guard systems don’t make it easy to check if your set screws or gas block is loose, and a cross pin is the most reliable way to ensure your gas block is snug. However, for end users that don’t have access to custom fixturing or a mill, pinning a gas block on your own build can be a hassle. Enter 87 Industries.

They offer a Pinned Gas Block Kit which is set up so that the end user can install a pinned gas block with nothing more than a vise and a drill press. The owner tells me that it can even be done with a steady hand and a hand drill in a pinch. The kit includes a drill bit, tapered cross pin that eliminates the need for reaming,